


Doll Body

by ShadowoftheLamp



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Shadow magic, Uncanny Valley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 17:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowoftheLamp/pseuds/ShadowoftheLamp
Summary: Ryou doesn’t look quite... right, if one takes the time to look.





	Doll Body

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always been really fascinated with ideas involving characters seeming just half a step off human due to influence from magic or technology, and Ryou especially is good for it.

It can be subtle, but it’s there.

His eyes are rich like melted cinnamon chocolate, but if you catch him at just the right moment, it’s like there’s fire flickering inside- or nothingness, the pupil a black hole. In those seconds, it’s as if there was never a person behind the eyes at all, and anyone who sees it shudders, assumes it’s a trick of the light. There is often a softness under his eyes, echoes of purple representing a dozen restless dreams, and if one catches him in the dark, for a moment it’s as if his irises glow amber.

Everywhere Ryou goes, a pack of fans follow, like the sleek hair flowing past his shoulders and the Ring bouncing around his neck are the flute of a piper, drawing all those who keep pace to their doom. Ryou doesn’t much like it, or even really understand it. It’s hard to realize the appeal of something you’ve had as long as you can remember, after all. 

His skin stays perfectly porcelain, despite never doing anything to keep it that way beyond showering. When he smiles, it’s usually with his lips closed, quiet and unassuming. If he’s with friends and starts to laugh, though, one can see the way his canine teeth are like knives, too white and too long and too pointed. One may fear for his tongue, though it never seems to catch.

The aura of shadow magic curls around him like a cloak, comfortably settled the same way a cat settles down to its bed. He knows it, and it knows him. To those who don’t recognize it besides an ache in their bones and a whisper in their minds, it’s a siren’s song, power and beauty and something just on the ethereal side of perfect. It’s intoxicating, enough that there’s barely a thought spared for the boy it surrounds besides the sculpted face and body it helped to create. A body that’s a gift like the friends and the games and the soulmate it offered. One must treat their vessel to the scale of which they plan to reap dividends, after all. 

And the Ring intends to use this host to reap the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments super appreciated!


End file.
